Diablo 3 Season 2 will start three weeks after the 2.1.2 patch

Blizzard are to delay the launch of Diablo 3 Season 2 to give players time to adjust.

Diablo 3 players have been eagerly awaiting the launch of the second season but they will have to wait longer because Blizzard has decided it would be best to let players “adjust” to game changes in patch 2.1.2 before letting them loose in the new season. With that in mind, the second Season will now launch three weeks after the release of the upcoming 2.1.2 patch which we expect will appear in the next week on the servers.

The update from Blizzard reads:

With respect to Seasons, our goal is to avoid implementing major balance changes towards the end of a Season. Ideally, patches and significant hotfixes will occur between Seasons or early enough in the Season that players have ample time to adjust to the new environment.

However, we discovered some technical risks in executing a simultaneous launch of patch 2.1.2 and the upcoming Season rollover, and it’s clear that trying to do both in tandem or close proximity would jeopardize both processes. This left us with two options:

A) We launch patch 2.1.2 after the Season rollover. In this scenario, Seasonal players wouldn’t have access to any new 2.1.2 items including updated Set items, updated Legendary items, and the new Seasonal items for at least a couple of weeks after the Season went live.

B)We could launch patch 2.1.2 before the Season rollover. In this scenario, this would impact Seasonal Leaderboard progression.

Not giving Seasonal players access to new items right away in Season 2 would take a lot of the excitement out of the start of that new Season. With this, we believe that by giving players a few weeks to adjust to patch 2.1.2 changes, and by allowing them to test existing changes on the PTR, the impact on the existing Leaderboards can be minimized.

After weighing both options carefully, we have decided to launch patch 2.1.2 three weeks prior to the Season rollover. This should provide players enough time to adjust to the patch changes before the Season ends as well as ensure that Season 1 is not prolonged further for those looking forward to Season 2.

Season 1 will have been running for around six months by the time Season 2 launches which is probably longer than most players expected.